Prevalence and genetic diversity of arginine catabolic mobile element (ACME) in clinical isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci: Identification of ACME type I variants in Staphylococcus epidermidis

•A novel ACME I variant, ACMEΔI, was identified in Staphylococcus epidermidis.•ACMEΔI was classified into three subtypes according to the size of the PCR product.•Some genetic elements between the arc and opp3 cluster were deleted in ACMEΔI.•The opp3 cluster of ACMEΔI was genetically more divergent than the arc cluster.

Arginine catabolic mobile element (ACME), a genomic island consisting of the arc and/or opp3 gene clusters found in staphylococcal species, is related to increased bacterial adaptability to hosts. Staphylococcus epidermidis is considered a major ACME reservoir; however, prevalence and genetic diversity of ACME in coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) have not yet been well characterized for clinical isolates in Japan. A total of 271 clinical isolates of CNS in a Japanese hospital were investigated for the presence and genotype of ACME and SCCmec. The prevalence of ACME-arcA was significantly higher (p < 0.001) in S. epidermidis (45.8%) than in other CNS species (3.7%). ACME in S. epidermidis isolates (n = 87) were differentiated into type I (n = 33), variant forms of type I (ΔI, n = 26) newly identified in this study, type II (n = 6), and type ΔII (n = 19). ACME-type ΔI, which were further classified into three subtypes, lacked some genetic components between the arc and opp3 clusters in archetypal type I, whereas the arc and opp3 clusters were intact. The arc cluster exhibited high sequence identity (95.8-100%) to that of type I ACME; in contrast, the opp3 cluster was highly diverse, and showed relatively lower identities (94.8-98.7%) to the identical regions in type I ACME. Twenty-one isolates of ΔI ACME-carrying S. epidermidis possessed SCCmec IVa and belonged to ST5 (clonal complex 2). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that isolates harboring ACME ΔI in this study clustered with previously reported S. epidermidis strains with other lineges, suggesting that S. epidermidis originally had some genetic variations in the opp3 cluster. In summary, ACME type ΔI, a truncated variant of ACME-I, was first identified in S. epidermidis, and revealed to be prevalent in ST5 MRSE clinical isolates with SCCmec IVa.